


Unlife

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:12:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Vampirellabites. The pairing was Xangel, and the prompt was “Mouth”, by Bush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angelus's Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Booooooo!  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by three years.

I

  
  
In a corner of a darkened room, Angelus’s boy crouches, shaking and silent.  
  
He’s learned that muttering and weeping only bring more pain.  
  
He does not mutter, except when he sleeps.  
  
He does not weep, except when he dreams.  
  
This dry silence, is no guarantee that pain won’t happen. There  _is_  no such guarantee. Even when he’s being ignored, he has no doubt that Angelus is quite aware of him.   
  
He’s always cold, these days.   
  
Not enough blood to chase away the eternal gooseflesh that covers his body. Angelus has seen to that.  
  
He only wishes he could stop shaking. . . .  
  


II

  
  
Angelus’s boy is  _always_  cold.  
  
He wonders if this is finally the end.   
  
He’s been dying for a long time--since the day he was born, maybe. Life is a dream he never remembers upon waking, except to wonder why his face is covered in tears.  
  
Sometimes,  _he_  is there.   
  
On some nights, Angelus forgoes the hunt to watch his boy mutter and dream. Sometimes he punishes his boy for the muttering, but most times, he does not.   
  
Most times . . . he merely watches, neither frowning nor smiling. His angel’s face hides a demon with the arbitrary nature of a God.  
  


III

  
  
“Let me  _go_!”   
  
It’s a new voice-- _human_ ; warm with breath and blood and fear.  
  
New, but familiar and--  
  
“Xander!”   
  
\--relieved.   
  
The girl Angelus shoves into the room is  _relieved_  to see him. Happy, even.   
  
Angelus’s boy remembers  _happy_  less clearly than he remembers his dreams.  
  
She flings herself into his arms, holding him so tight her warmth soaks into him, chases away goosebumps, stirring something in him. . . .   
  
Something buried and long-ignored.  
  
“Fucking bastards!” She sobs, her tears scalding his neck.  
  
“Shouldn’t swear, Dawnie . . . it’ll be okay,” he promises in a rusty, under-used voice. She only cries harder.   
  


IV

  
  
“. . . and we thought he’d killed you! We didn’t think--” she glances away. “We didn’t think you two . . . being all groiny would equal a moment of perfect happiness.”   
  
After forever of hearing only Angelus’s voice, and the whispered obedience of the fledges, her voice is high, and vaguely alarming.  
  
“God, what does he  _want_  with us--?”   
  
“It’ll be okay,” he croons. Her voice, her face, her  _hair_ \--short and dirty, when it should be long and shining, like in his dreams--makes the empty places in him ache.  
  
In his dreams, she smells like floral shampoo and licorice . . . not like food.  
  


V

  
  
The girl sleeps soundly; doesn’t even stir. He can almost see the color of her dreams.  
  
“Today?” Angelus asks, gentle fingers brushing away tears and lingering over ashen cheek and pale, bitten lips.  
  
. . . pastel pink for her past. . . .   
  
His boy shakes his head, whispers  _no . . . please,_  even as he leans into the touch he’s learned to dread with a strange sort of longing.  
  
. . . cadmium yellow for her present. . . .  
  
Even as he longs for the slow, steady pulse at his side.  
  
. . . arterial red, for a future bright with pain.  
  
His boy’s shivers turn to panting; Angelus’s smile widens.  
  
“Soon,” he murmurs.  
  


VI

  
  
In this dream   
he hungers   
and thirsts   
and fears  
  
 _Drink_  
  
a voice whispers  
 _the_  voice   
he does  
  
buries his face in warmth   
that punctures like a balloon  
  
he  
clutches at  
grinds into  
tastes something   
more satisfying than air   
and far tighter  
  
he is  
  
so low  
  
high  
and warm   
and fearless  
and horny   
and hungry still  
  
the something in his arms   
moans  
squishes   
eventually gives  
  
his dream  
his choice  
  
has been made at  _last_  
  
he opens his mouth   
to roar at the sky  
triumphantly  
  
only  
  
a small, broken bird flies out   
and up   
and away  
  
he   
is relieved to see it go  
can’t understand why he ever tried to keep it.  
  


VII

  
  
“It’s a hard lesson you’ve learned, but one you’ll never forget.”   
  
A murmured word to the minion who waits just out of sight and the mangled corpse is quickly removed.  
  
“You can’t win against me. You’ll  _never_  win,” Angelus says softly, licking his boy’s bloody lips. “Do you understand, now?”  
  
Transfixed by biting kisses down his throat--all over his chest and stomach--he nods, too dazed to do anything else.   
  
“What do you say, childe?”   
  
Sharp fangs teasing the tip of his cock makes Angelus’s boy squirm and gasp. “. . . t-thank you, Sire. . . .”   
  
“My sweet boy.”  
  
Angelus’s mouth engulfs him.


	2. The Token

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Vampirellabites’s prompt: Xangel and the lyrics to Mouth, by Bush. Two hundred words. A prequel to "Angelus's Boy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Joss lays it out, for us to play it out. Word.  
> Notes: Set Post-NFA by several years, and Pre-"Angelus's Boy" by one year.

I was a broken-down soul machine; lost, without purpose . . . running out of steam.  
  
You gave me . . . words, of course; sharp and shocking, like a kick in the ass.  
  
You gave me silence when I spoke.  
  
You gave me a black eye. I returned the favor.  
  
You knocked down walls--the peeling furniture that passed for them--as fast as I put them up.   
  
You never gave up on me.   
  
You gave me your hand and your mouth.  
  
You gave me silver grins in the darkness--the quick slide of tongue over flesh, kisses that stole the breath I don’t have, that swallowed gasps and cries.  
  
You gave me a reason be.  
  
You took my body and gave me the sweet, uncomplicated warmth of yours.  
  
Your gave me love.  
  
You gave me hope.   
  
You gave me laughter  
  
You gave me a home.  
  
You gave me your heart and your soul; I was more than happy to accept them.  
  
You gave me all that you were, which was everything you had. In doing so, you gave me back myself.  
  
In return, I give you this.  
  
A small token of my--  
  
Well. . . .  
  
For the sake of argument, let’s call it love.  
  



	3. Unlife: DIsjointed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of slice-of-unlife vignettes. My prompt was Republica’s Ready To Go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Yuck!  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years. MAJOR character death.

Angelus would never have said that someone so obviously made for light would ever truly feel at home embracing darkness.  
  
 _Embodying_  it.  
  
But watching Xander hunt and toy with his victim--one of the large number of total morons who go jogging in Central Park at night--he revises his opinion. Xander’s not only a natural predator, he takes a joy in the kill that Angelus finds quite refreshing.  
  
The nameless jogger’s death makes Dawn Summers’s death look merciful in comparison.  
  
Fondly remembering his own first kills, Angelus leaves his boy to it. Chooses a bench near the Museum Mile exit, and waits.  
  
Nearly two hours pass before Xander pounces on him, all bloody face, bloody hands, bloody clothes and bloody kisses.  
  
“Well . . . someone had himself a time of it,” Angelus notes as Xander straddles his legs.  
  
“It was so  _cool_ , Angelus!” He wriggles around as Angelus licks at the tacky blood drying on chin and throat. “They’re gonna be finding pieces of that guy for  _months!_ ”   
  
“You’re a messy eater, boy,” Angelus tsks. “You’ve got to learn to be neater, and more careful. Can’t make every kill this . . . high profile. The last thing we need is a Slayer on our case.”  
  
“Oh . . . okay. Can we hunt here tomorrow night?”  
  
Angelus smiles, kissing Xander’s throat. “If you like.”  
  
“Sweet!”  
  
“It certainly is,” Angelus murmurs, shoving his hand down Xander’s blood-stained sweats.   
  
“Yeah . . . yeah.” Xander thrusts into Angelus’s fist and offers his throat . . . a still, pale curve in the meager starlight. Angelus nips, but doesn’t draw blood, brushing his thumb over the tip of Xander’s cock.  
  
“Beg for it.”  
  
“ _Please_ , Sire . . . drink. . . .”   
  
Angelus bites down and blood like chocolate-flavored sunshine--bittersweet and bright--spills into his mouth.  
  
“Fuck-yeah! Angelus--” Xander clutches at Angelus’s shoulders, shudders and comes all over Angelus’s hand with a groan.   
  
Even after Xander goes limp, he keeps drinking slowly, leisurely. There’s nothing quite like a post-orgasmic, endorphin-laden childe for a lazy summer night’s sippin’. . . .  
  
Twenty minutes later, Xander’s still a sated puddle of childe, purring contentedly as Angelus strokes his hair. Somewhere, deeper in the park, there’s a hoarse, surprised scream.   
  
Around them, the night falls silent, holds it’s breath. Not a tree rustles, not a leaf stirs, not an animal moves.   
  
Xander suddenly shouts:  _“Run, Forrest! Run!”_. Then he starts laughing hysterically. Something about that particular laugh has always raised Angelus’s hackles, but he holds Xander tighter, till the laugh--high-pitched, eery--tapers into sporadic giggles.  
  
“What’s so funny?”  
  
“I think s-somebody just found a piece of that g-guy I ate,” Xander chokes out, burying his face in Angelus’s shoulder to stifle the giggles. Curious, Angelus focuses his senses and sure enough, human feet in running shoes are pounding the pavement not too far away. Getting farther, though; the scents of terror and nausea trail in their wake.   
  
When the sound and scents have grown distant, Angelus says ”huh”, which makes Xander start giggling again. Angelus rather likes the giggle--inasmuch that it’s not that wild, mad cackle--so he tackles his boy to the ground for intensive tickling.  
  
“Gonna make me wet my pants!”  
  
“I sincerely doubt that, boy.” But Angelus stops, pinning Xander’s hands to the ground, looking down into his boy’s face. He looks so pale and young--younger still, somehow, for the raggedy eye-patch, the only remnant of his life as a human. . . .  
  
“Angelus?”  
  
Angelus forces away his unusually melancholy turn of thought. “Hm?”  
  
“Um . . . what’s a Slayer?”  
  


*

  
  
“A smiley-face?” Angelus asks, slightly nonplussed by the grinning, yellow face on his boy’s new eye-patch.  
  
Xander grins, bearing an uncanny resemblance to said smiley-face. “Yep. This weird old guy was selling a bunch of novelty  _eye-patches_ \--who knew--in the East Village, so I bought some.” He waves a small black plastic bag triumphantly.  
  
“You kill the oddest people, boy.”  
  
“Oh, I didn’t  _kill_  him--that woulda been like killing the Michelangelo of eye-patches. Or maybe one of the other turtles. Or--ooh! The  _Master Splinter_  of eye-patches.”  
  
Xander bounces and Angelus suppresses a sigh. When he reaches out and brushes his finger over the smiley-face, Xander shivers.   
  
“You’re mad as a March hare, boy.”  
  
“As long as I get to be Angelus’s March hare, that’s fine by me.”  
  
Angelus smiles absently, thinking:  _I’m going to hunt in the East Village for the next few nights and when I find this eye-patch man . . . I’ll make his death_ last. . . .   
  


*

  
  
As the last of the minions file out of the loft, Angelus’s boy watches them go with a bright, wary eye and a patch that says ‘yar, matey!’ in light blue stitching.   
  
“They are so weird,” he says, looking out the window.  
  
“Says the vampire with a collection of novelty eye-patches.” Angelus leans back in his new vibrating lounger--another recent gift from his childe. At the rate Xander’s going through _Hammacher Schlemmer_  and  _Sharper Image_ , there wouldn’t be enough room in the loft for either of them, before long. It might be time to look into getting a larger lair. . . .   
  
“Seriously--the minions don’t weird you out? Even a little?”  
  
“Why should they? I made them. It’d be like being afraid of my pets.”  
  
“They give me the wiggins.” Xander follows the progress of the minions in question as they shuffle down the street with a growl and narrowed eye.   
  
“Once you make some minions of your own, you’ll understand.”  
  
“Yuck! No way!” Xander shudders melodramatically. “They’re all creepy and stu--um, challenged . . . like zombies. Not like  _real_  zombies--like zombie!Kyle; zombie!Kyle was really cool--but like movie zombies. I kinda expect them to stagger around muttering ‘Brains . . . brains!' Nope, Xan-the-man is--and will remain a minion-free vamp.”  
  
Angelus allows himself a slight smile. “I’ll remind you you said that fifty years from now. In the mean time, get over here, boy.”  
  
Xander bounds across the loft like a happy, completely batshit puppy then wavers for a moment, obviously wanting to sit in Angelus’s lap. For once, he seems unwilling to do so without expressed invitation.   
  
Angelus pats his lap, which is immediately filled with wriggling, amorous childe.  
  
“Have you tried it at the highest setting? ‘Cause I hear that’s really--”  
  
“Would you like me to turn the chair up to the highest setting, Xander?”  
  
“Yes, Sire.” And the inordinate amount of rocking/grinding that accompanies that meek little affirmative? So calculated.  
  
“Tease.” Angelus chuckles and turns the dial on the side of the chair as high as it’ll go.  
  
A few minutes later, Xander asks him to turn it back down to the lowest setting.   
  
“I was starting to get seasick,” he says apologetically, laying his head on Angelus’s shoulder.   
  
“Hmm . . . but it’s the  _minions_  who’re weird.”  
  
“Hey--how come we can’t fly?” Xander asks, completely out of left field.   
  
“We can’t fly, idiot-boy--” Angelus gasps as Xander’s fangs prick his neck. “We can’t fly because this is  _reality_ , not an Anne Rice novel.”  
  
Xander sits up and gives him a look of mock-disbelief. “I dunno, Sire . . . pretty guys and lots of homosexuality . . . sounds like an Anne Rice novel to-- _guh!_ ”  
  


*

  
  
“Have you no respect for the kill, boy? Is nothing sacred?”  
  
Xander grins. “Nope.”  
  
After holding a stern glare for nearly five whole seconds, Angelus sighs.  
  
“You’re daft.”  
  
“I’m  _funny_ ,” Xander corrects, still grinning. He makes the penny loafers he’s holding--with the feet still in them, no less, nobs of bloody bone shining in golden glow of the area lamp--do another soft-shoe routine across the late Stella Murphy’s coffee table.  
  
Before the act is over, Angelus cracks a smile.  
  


*

  
  
Xander screams and it’s music to Angelus’s ears. It wouldn’t do to let on, though.  
  
“You can do better than that, boy . . . I know you can,” Angelus says sternly, though focusing is difficult with Xander’s blood and pain and pheromones scenting the air. The boy tries to twist away, but he’s spread-eagled on the bed and manacled to all four bedposts. He’s not going anywhere. Hasn’t gone anywhere for the past four nights.  
  
When he makes a sound that’s more of a thin, wavering sort of wail, than it is a scream, Angelus sighs, scratching at the dried blood flaking on his fingers. “Still not good enough, Xander . . . we’ll just have to keep trying.”  
  
He selects another toothpick and slowly inserts it under Xander’s left thumbnail.  
  
They get all the way up to toothpick number twenty, and nail number seven before Xander screams  _just_  right.  
  
Angelus fucks him then, slowly, tenderly, whispers sweet obscenities in ears too far gone to hear them. When he’s done, he collapses on top of his boy, wrung-out. Xander is barely conscious, barely able to rattle his chains.  
  
In seconds, Angelus is asleep. His boy’s raw, pained whimpers are like a lullaby.  
  


*

  
  
His boy has a taste for redheads.  
  
Angelus doesn’t have to be Freud to pick up on the significance of that.   
  
Xander hunts them, lures them back to their townhouse--that had once belonged to the widow Murphy--brings their bloody hair and gouged-out eyes home as souvenirs. Something else Angelus doesn’t have to be Freud to note the significance of.  
  
But it’s hardly unpleasant to come home to find his boy fucking dessert--or merely curled up around it, keeping it from getting away.  
  
Definitely a quirk, this fascination with redheads. But as long as it doesn’t become a  _pattern_  that either the cops, or one of the Slayers can follow, he allows Xander this idiosyncrasy.  
  
And damned if, after taking a redhead, his boy doesn’t taste of strawberries. . . .  
  


*

  
  
“She knew my name, Angelus.”  
  
Angelus paces restlessly across the dubious shelter of a tenement roof.  
  
Xander’s teeth are chattering and he shivers in the meager protection of Angelus’s coat. The boy’s always felt the cold too easily, too keenly. The steady snowfall isn’t helping matters.  
  
It’d been too close, this time. What are the use of minions, if one tiny, slip of a thing--well, a small army of them--can cut through their ranks like a hot knife through butter? What use is  _he_ when he can barely get himself or his reckless childe away from the bitch?  
  
“. . . looked like a girl I used to see in my dreams a lot. But why would I be dreaming about a _Slayer_? Till a year ago, I didn’t even know they existed. . . .” Xander looks pitiful and confused, sniffling even though he has no mucus to do it with.  
  
And the little bastard had  _fought_  him! High on blood-lust, eager to weigh in against the six Slayers, though he couldn’t have possibly won, Xander had tried to throw himself into the fray, even as their home was burned down around their ears.   
  
But the look of pure, cold rage in  _her_  eyes when she recognized her former lieutenant fighting at Angelus’s side. . . .   
  
Angelus’d seen not only his own death in her eyes, but his childe’s death as well, and he’d felt _fear_.  
  
In the end, he’d had to knock his flailing boy unconscious, carry him out of their home, and now . . . they find themselves homeless and pursued and--  
  
Xander is still watching him with that grave, adoring look on his face; utterly trusting, secure that Sire has a plan.  
  
Hah.  
  
For the better part of three hours, Angelus has been too wound up to plan beyond getting them both away from the townhouse and not stopping till they’d left Manhattan behind.  
  
Across the river, New York City twinkles like a piece of firmament fallen to Earth. Below them, Newark shines like tarnished gold.   
  
“. . . in my dreams, I think her name was Muffy, or maybe Buf--”  
  
Before Xander finishes saying that name, Angelus is beating him to the ground: kicking and punching and breaking . . . till the snow is soaked with blood.  
  


*

  
  
“I got one, Angelus. . . .”  
  
Xander giggles, staggering into the office of their latest temporary lair--another abandoned factory--with clothing in tatters and novelty eye-patch askew. He reeks of pheromones and human blood. Heat radiates from him like lust.   
  
 _Lust_  radiates from him like lust.  
  
“You’re high,” Angelus says quietly, in a voice that promises nights of agony and days of unrelieved suffering. With the Slayers aware of their existence and on their asses, they can’t afford to be less than battle ready.   
  
Xander blinks owlishly, his face scruffy and oddly young-looking despite the patch, stubble and disreputable smudges. “Not high . . . I  _got one_ \--got the drop on her and drank her all up.” He slurps ostentatiously, and in a burst of speed, is across the small office, throwing his arms around Angelus and smiling up at him. “I love you, Angelus.”  
  
Mentally rolling his eyes, Angelus catches Xander’s wrists and squeezes warningly. “ _Who_  did you drink, boy, and what was she on?”  
  
Another giggle, and a wriggle that makes them both hard.  _Harder_. “I drank the Slayer,” he breathes, as if confiding a secret. Then he tilts his head to the side. “She’s all warm and powerful and angry . . . want a taste?”  
  
For a few moments, it’s as if the boy’s speaking Japanese, a language Angelus had never bothered to learn. The silence draws out while he processes what he’s just heard.  
  
“Okay, she wasn’t  _the_  Slayer--that one that burned our house--this was some other chick. A stocky redhead. That’s why I started following her. When I grabbed her, she tried to stake me . . . but I fixed her.” Xander’s smile is satisfied, his fangs still bloody. “I’m gonna get the one that burned up our place, too. And when I do, I’m gonna take my time with her.”  
  
Looking into his boy’s eye--and the silly ‘gar! where’s me parrot?’ eye-patch--Angelus experiences a pang of fear-driven anger. Just like the night  _the_  Slayer destroyed the life they’d so carefully built.  
  
His first instinct is to beat it into his boy that he’s to avoid the lot of them--beat some goddamn sense into that fearless, addled head.  
  
Right on the heels of his first instinct, comes the desire to reward such bravery, loyalty and cunning.  
  
“I didn’t do it as well as you would’ve, Sire, but I made her suffer,” Xander says, smile replaced by grim earnestness.  
  
Angelus follows his desire, and wonders if he’s going soft.  
  
“I know you did, childe.” He pushes Xander down onto the only piece of furniture in the office--a filthy, chipped desk--and turns him on his stomach. The torn, bloody jeans are gone in a heartbeat and Angelus is breaking him open, taking him, claiming him, asserting mastery over yet another childe who’s bested a Slayer.  
  
“You’re my own good boy, Xander,” he murmurs over his boy’s breathy gasps, brushing aside too-long hair to lick, to kiss, to bite.  
  
To drink the blood of a Slayer.  
  


*

  
  
“Please, Sire? I’ll be careful and quick and neat.”  
  
Angelus watches his blissed-out boy sprawl so innocently, so wantonly--so  _helplessly_  on the black satin sheets. He doesn’t so much as tug at his manacles anymore . . . unless Angelus tells him to.   
  
“Quick, I’ll believe.” Angelus smirks, trailing his finger in the spatters of come on Xander’s stomach and chest. “But careful and neat?”   
  
“I’ll bring her back to you, untouched,” Xander promises. That spacy, adoring grin is oh, so reminiscent of Drusilla.   
  
The boy’s been raring at the bit, wanting to go Slayer-hunting, pestering Angelus about it for months. Like William, Xander’s impulsive and cocksure.   
  
Like William, Xander’s had his taste and wants more. Angelus has had to forbid him from hunting Slayers on his own, but he wonders how long it’ll be before the boy disobeys. . . finds himself on the wrong end of a stake.  
  
 _Yo-ho-ho!_  today’s eye-patch proclaims in cheerful, lime green stitchery.   
  
Angelus taps his finger on Xander’s lips; a cool, pink tongue darts out to lick it clean. “If I wanted a Slayer, Xander, I’d go out and kill one, myself.”  
  
Xander rolls his eye. “Well, duh. But I wanna give you a token of my loyalty and my love and--”  
  
“And--” Angelus pushes his finger back into Xander’s mouth, shivering when the edge of a fang parts the skin easily. “And you really want to get fucked by a Sire who’s high on Slayer’s blood.”   
  
The sudden spike of pheromones is answer enough.  
  
“If you want to show your love so badly, I have an idea that’d net you a Slayer in less than a week.” Angelus sighs, affecting disinterest and condescension. “If you’re vamp enough to do it, that is. I’ll understand if you’re not.”  
  
The legs suddenly wrapped around his waist are answer enough.  
  


*

  
  
His boy is sitting on a headstone, brushing grave-dirt off of his cheap burial suit and cussing up a blue-streak. Angelus honestly hadn’t expected it to go this far.  
  
The “plan” had been so complex, so overwrought, so full of silly twists that--only an utter fool would have unquestioningly played the part Angelus had assigned Xander.  
  
His boy had indeed played that part to the hilt.  
  
“I can’t believe this actually worked,” Angelus says wonderingly, nudging the dead Slayer’s broken body with his boot. She’d been a ruthless fighter . . . a  _warrior_ , not just prey. Her blood is electric, makes his veins tingle. “You did well, tonight.”  
  
“Me? You were the one who came up with and executed the kick-ass plan--man, that was ingenious! All I did was spend three days in a casket. I was just bait.” Xander snorts, then jumps up, yelping. He dances around, hopping on one foot shaking his pants leg till a night-crawler falls out. “Next time, though,  _you_  get to take the dirt nap.”  
  
 _Next time?_ Next time _? There wasn’t even supposed to be a first time. This_ plan _was nothing more than a practical joke--one where you got_ buried _for no good reason and I got to laugh at you for letting yourself be buried. You shouldn’t trust me so much. . . ._  
  
“Not every childe would be capable of your--” _stupidity_ ”--unquestioning loyalty,” Angelus notes. It occurs to him that Xander is, in his own strange way, a perfect childe. Perfectly loyal, perfectly obedient, perfectly--  
  
“Bein’ buried wasn’t so bad . . . kinda boring, though. I mostly just slept and played the Kevin Bacon game a whole bunch of times.” Xander shrugs. “What  _I_  can’t believe is that it took three days before that stupid bitch came to investigate, I mean--the obit said I died of a ‘mysterious neck injury’ at night! How many more red flags did she need? And you were right--she made so much damn noise I could hear her through six feet of earth and two inches of imitation pine.”   
  
 _Perfectly mine_ , Angelus thinks gleefully, and on the heels of that:  _You shouldn’t trust me_ this _much, boy--or at all, really . . . but you do. You do._  
  
Xander shakes dirt, splinters and an earthworm out of his hair.   
  
Quicker than a thought, Angelus is across the small clearing and pulling Xander into back his arms. “Xander. . . .”  
  
“And you finished her off before I got out. I didn’t even get to watch you drink her.”  
  
Pouting!Xander  _always_  makes Angelus hard. Xander  _period_  makes Angelus hard, and tonight is no different.  
  
“You smell so good. . . .” he bites Xander’s neck not-so-gently, to keep what he really wants to say from slipping out.  
  
 _I missed you. I’m proud of you._  
  
“I smell good?” Wary disbelief as Angelus holds him tighter.   
  
“Very good.”  
  
“If that’s your way of telling me I have grave-stink, fuck you very much.”  
  
“Think I’ll fuck you, instead,” he murmurs on skin that does indeed smell of the grave, but also of home and family and desire.   
  
Xander makes a soft sound of want low in his throat, offering his neck with a breathless: “Sire.”  
  
Angelus unbuttons Xander’s dirty pants and starts stroking. “This was a ridiculous plan,” he whispers in Xander’s ear. “We’re never doing anything like this again, childe. Understood?”   
  
Xander nods, his head falling back on Angelus’s shoulder. Angelus bites him again, just hard enough to leave a mark.   
  
“Good, then.”  _Stupid, reckless, crazy boy. . . ._  “I’m proud of you.”  
  


*

  
  
It can’t be later than noon, one day, when Angelus wakes out of a dead sleep to find Xander standing over him, gazing down at him blankly.  
  
Holding an ax.  
  
As fast Angelus can move, it’d be impossible to avoid death, if that’s what Xander has decided to give him. But he supposes that if Xander really wanted him dead, he wouldn’t have woken up at all. So he asks in his softest, least-inflected voice: “What do you think you’re doing?”  
  
“You killed me . . . I killed Dawn.” Xander’s voice is sing-songy, distant. “Buffy won’t stop, she’ll--she’ll never stop till we’re dead, or she is.”  
  
Angelus sits up slowly, non-threateningly. When Xander doesn’t react, he stands up. Finally, Xander’s eye tracks him, scans his face. He clutches the ax tighter, his mouth set in a grim line.  
  
“I won’t let her take you away.”  
  
Angelus has to dig deep for the voice he’d used to calm Drusilla when nothing else worked. “She won’t take me--”  
  
“She  _will_  . . . she’ll stick a soul in you and you won’t want me anymore ‘cause I’m bad--”  
  
“After what I’ve done, I don’t think she’d bother with the soul,” Angelus snorts.  
  
“Then she’ll dust you. And even if I manage to get away, I’ll still be all alone.”  
  
“Xander--”  
  
“I don’t wanna be alone, Angel.” Angelus winces. “I don’t wanna.”   
  
“Xander,” Angelus says in that same, soft tone. The only response he receives is a slow blink. He reaches up and caresses Xander’s cold cheek. “Lay down and go back to sleep, Xander.”  
  
“She’ll take you away.” Xander’s own voice is small, frightened, forlorn, his eye welling with unshed tears. “If I don’t stop her, she’ll take you away. Let me kill her.”  
  
Swallowing rage so bright it scorches the backs of his eyes, Angelus puts his hands on Xander’s chilly shoulders. “I told you: no more Slayers--especially that one.”  
  
“But she’ll take you away,” he says again; then the ax falls to the floor with a dull clunk and Xander crumples.   
  
Uncomfortably out of his depth, Angelus picks his boy up and lays him down on their bed, spooning up behind him, holding him while he weeps like--something that has a soul.  
  
“Hush . . . hush, my sweet boy,” he croons, channeling William--who’d always known how to calm Drusilla--though he doesn’t expect it to work for him and Xander. Xander's mad, true enough, but not  _Drusilla_  mad.  
  
But it seems that William had the right of it. Nonsense words and a soothing tone work wonders on the anyone, vamp or human, insane or slightly less insane. When Xander’s tears and hitching breaths have stopped, he sighs shakily.  
  
“I don’t wanna remember. It’s easier when I don’t remember . . . hurts less.”   
  
“Then forget, Xander.” Angelus turns it into a command because Xander  _always_  does what Sire commands. “You did it once before, you can do it again. Forget.”   
  
“Sire. . . .” Xander murmurs turning to face him. One wet eye and one ‘Avast, me hearties!’ eye-patch regard him steadily. “Make me bleed.”  
  
Then he’s tugging Angelus on top of him, all strong arms and desperate kisses. Angelus holds him, tries to fuck the memories away. These past few years have been better than good, and that’s thanks--in no small part--to the fact that Xander’s earliest memory was of Angelus carrying him out of that cellar, to a warm bed and comfort.   
  
Xander has been pure, untainted by memories of life and unlife before that first night. Angelus has lost a lot to the Slayer . . . he won’t lose this.  
  
At sundown they fall asleep, bloody, bruised and exhausted. But when Angelus wakes up at moonrise, Xander--and his ax--have gone.  
  
They don’t return for nearly two months.  
  


*

  
  
“Slayer of Slayers,” Angelus says coldly. “You always were braver than you were smart.”   
  
Xander makes a small cry that’s quickly bitten off.  
  
Angelus sets up a hard, punishing rhythm, using Xander’s body as hard as any he’s ever had in his power.   
  
His boy bears up under it, taking every lash, every gouge stoically. Every swatch of skin that sloughs off under Angelus’s wrath--every gobbet of flesh torn out by the small barbs on the end of the whip is borne with near-silent acceptance.  
  
For hours, Angelus stalks around his childe’s body, looking for the right spot to land the next blow. The only sound in the cellar is his grunts of exertion and the muted  _chink_  of the chains that suspend Xander two feet above the dirty floor.  
  
It’s only when there’s more skin on that floor than on his boy, that Angelus finally stops, so covered in blood that it drips from him. He’s still angry, still hard, still pleased and still relieved that his childe--his mad, foolish, lucky-to-be-undusted boy--has returned.  
  
 _I missed you. I worried about you. I’m proud of you . . . I love you._  
  
“Now . . . what’ve you got to say for yourself, Xander--and remember: the ice you’re skating on is thin enough without making any smart ass remarks.”  
  
Xander doesn’t answer for some time, merely hangs there.   
  
Angelus has seen this before, with his other childer, knows that sometimes, it takes the mind awhile to return from the places extreme pain can send it.  
  
But Xander is opening his blood-shot eye and licking his ruined lips in less than an hour.  
  
“Bitch . . . hadda pay. . . .” he slurs wetly. Several of his fangs lay on the floor, knocked out during the beating that prefaced the whipping. He has to struggle to enunciate. “Burned . . . home . . . killed minions--”  
  
“You think I give a tinker’s damn about a house and a handful of useless minions?” Angelus growls. “If you weren’t already thrashed halfway to dust, I’d beat you some more for being so fucking stupid.”  
  
“Hadda make sure--” Xander’s eye rolls as he struggles not to black-out; his sigh is wet, labored. “--couldn’ take you ‘way. Love . . . love you, Sire . . . don’ lemme ‘lone. . . .”  
  
Angelus turns away, sickened. Not by the sight--he’s both seen and done much worse than this to people that have angered him less--but by a revelation he’s had on more than one occasion:  
  
 _This boy, this Slayer of Slayers, is perfectly mine._  
  
Suddenly, that thought is as horrible as it is exhilarating. It makes him angry at Xander for a reason he can’t put his finger on.  
  
“You’ll hang there and suffer for your disobedience and your presumption. When I tell you to steer clear of Slayers, you’d better listen.”  
  
Angelus leaves the boy hanging in the cellar for the rest of the day--means to leave him hanging for two more days, at least--but by sunset, Xander is in their bed, bandaged head to foot and deep in a healing coma.  
  
Angelus watches him sleep, and broods.   
  
From it’s place of honor on their mantle,  _the_  Slayer’s eyeless, gore-streaked head watches them both.  
  


*

  
  
He’s quieter, now.  
  
Xander talks a lot less since he came home dirty, gaunt and carrying the Slayer’s head. Angelus doesn’t know why his boy is so suddenly silent--whether it’s introspection, or anger, or regret--only that it’s a timid sort of silence . . . a waiting silence.  
  
What Xander’s waiting for, Angelus couldn’t begin to imagine. He suspects that Xander doesn’t know either.  
  
What he does know is that at some point in the past few years, he’d grown used to Xander’s chatter, Xander’s video games--even Xander’s music. He’d grown used to being pounced on and nuzzled at inappropriate moments for absolutely no reason at all.  
  
At some point, in the past few years, he’d grown used to  _Xander_.  
  


*

  
  
Kissing in an alley, the blood of both their prey still warming them, they tear at each other’s clothes with more passion and enthusiasm than their recent encounters have possessed.  
  
“Let me, Sire,” Xander breathes, trying to pin Angelus’s hands to a wall. “Please let me?”  
  
Angelus looks into his boy’s eye and suddenly understands. Wonders why it took him--took _them_  so long to get here.  
  
He twists his hands out of Xander’s and shoves him hard. Loose brick crumbles down in a rusty-red shower when Xander hits the wall.  
  
“Can’t give this to you, boy,” Angelus says, sneering contemptuously. “You’ve got to  _take_  it. If you can.”  
  
Angelus is three steps from the mouth of the alley when Xander barrels into him, knocking him to the ground and delivering a kidney punch like a cannonball.   
  
The fight is on.   
  
It doesn’t last long, and there’s a strange dearth of funky ninjutsu-moves and kung-fu. It’s more like something out of  _WWF Smackdown!_  They grapple and circle, tackle and pin, growl and taunt and yet--neither of them gains the upper-hand for long. Angelus is the larger and stronger fighter, but Xander’s faster, more agile and fighting to  _win_ , not just until he loses.  
  
Finally, Xander stuns Angelus a right upper-cross like a sledgehammer and catches him before he falls.  
  
“Your idea of foreplay?” He growls, moving deeper into the alley, staggering under his Sire’s weight. “Is so  _Fight Club_.”  
  
“I let you win,” Angelus says, spitting out a mouthful of blood. Then he’s hugging a wall while Xander unzips his pants and lets them fall.  
  
“No . . . you  _wanted_  me to win, and, like an obedient childe, I did. There’s a difference, you know.” Xander takes a moment to fight with his own jeans before his cock, hard and cool, is brushing across Angelus’s ass. He shivers, pushing back against Xander impatiently.   
  
“Semantics,” he dismisses as Xander grabs his hips and holds them still.   
  
Blunt, human teeth worry the skin of Angelus’s neck for a moment then: “What the hell do Jewish people have to do with it?”  
  
Then the pain and pleasure of simultaneous penetration as Xander pushes into him with one hard thrust, and bites into shoulder, drinking blood in thirsty mouthfuls.  
  
Like the fight, there’s no finesse, no drawing it out. Xander misses Angelus’s prostate as much as he hits it, and doesn’t care. The alley wall Angelus is grinding against isn’t the warm hand of friendship--and damn near skins him--but  _he_  doesn’t care.   
  
It’s a dirty, desperate fuck against an alley wall, and they both need it more than they’ll ever admit.   
  
Angelus comes when Xander rips his fangs out, tearing muscle and skin. For several moments, there’s no world, no Xander, no anything, only perfect darkness. . . .  
  
. . . that recedes as Xander’s rhythm slows, but doesn’t stop. Reality comes back, bringing with it myriad aches and pains, some of them sweeter than others.  
  
“Thank you,” Xander whispers; he takes Angelus’s wrists--kisses one, then the other, before pinning them both to the wall above his head.   
  
“So . . . was this what you’ve been waiting for?” Angelus asks, twisting experimentally in Xander’s grip. The hands around his wrists are like iron, and they squeeze like vices.   
  
It’s obvious that he won't be let go of any time soon.  
  
Xander nuzzles the torn flesh of Angelus’s neck with a happy sigh. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”  
  


*

  
  
Angelus strolls out of the small convenience store and past the pumps. He’s got a plastic bag in one hand and a two-liter Pepsi in the other.  
  
As he approaches the convertible, he tunes in to the song on the radio and smiles.   
  
 _"You're weird, in tears, too near and too far away,  
He said, saw red, went home stayed in bed all day,   
Your t-shirt, dish dirt,   
Always love the one you hurt. . . ."_  
  
His boy is pale and beautiful in the moonlight, as well as horribly off-key, which makes Angelus smile.  
  
He slides into the passenger seat of the convertible. Xander immediately grabs for the bag, making a face when he sees the butterscotch, and making another face entirely when he sees the Twinkies.  
  
“What’re you listening to?” Angelus asks as the soda is whisked out of his hand.  
  
“Just a song I used to hear all the time when I was young.”   
  
“And you’re not young now?”  
  
“Nope. Now I’m . . . an older, maturer, deader Xander.  _Your_  older, maturer, deader Xander.” He shrugs and cracks the Pepsi, guzzling half of it in one long swallow. “So . . . how was your gas-station attendant?”  
  
Angelus makes a face of his own. “Greasy, tasted like petrochemicals.”   
  
“Toldja.” Xander snickers, taking a bite of his Twinkie with a look of pure relish.   
  
 _For a moment, Angelus is_ Angel _, watching Xander--warm, human,_ alive _Xander--across their kitchen table. Xander is eating--no,_ going down _on a Twinkie, a look of near-sexual satisfaction on his face. When he was done, Xander’d licked his fingers clean, seemingly oblivious that he was making his boyfriend jealous of a snack cake.  
  
Seemingly oblivious till he looked over at Angel and grinned slowly, smugly.  
  
”Was there something you wanted, dead-boy?”_  
  
Being with Xander had warmed Angel to his miserable, brooding core. He’d been happy . . . so damn happy that last night that though he’d closed his eyes as Angel, he’d opened them as Angelus.   
  
But Angelus hadn’t drained the boy sleeping so deeply and trustingly beside him; he’d turned, him before he woke up.  
  
And though it’d had been rough at first--he’d had to starve the boy and keep him locked in a cellar for a year before he’d take a human life--Angelus never regretted his decision. Corrupting the one ray of light in Angel’s life had made the darkness . . . richer, somehow.   
  
Fuller, deeper.   
  
Complete.  
  
“Man, I wish I’d had some warm O-neg for dipping,” Xander sighs wistfully, tossing his empty wrapper at a garbage can and missing entirely. He shrugs and turns to Angelus, catching him staring.  
  
He leans closer, his eye flashing gold. “You know. . . thanks to you, we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. We could--”  
  
“ _You’re_  keeping your hands to yourself and  _we’re_  keeping to the schedule.” Angelus catches Xander’s wandering hand and places it on the stick shift. “Lay on, MacDuff.”  
  
“You never let me have any fun,” Xander whines, but he’s grinning as he shifts gears.  
  
Angelus laughs and helps himself to a piece of butterscotch--which’ll hopefully get the chemical-taste out of his mouth--and leans back as Xander revs the engine. Then they’re pulling back onto the road and lead-footing due south down the highway, the wind in their hair.  
  
 _"It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing  
On the rooftops having it   
Baby I'm ready to go   
I'm back and ready to go   
From the rooftops shout it out, shout it out   
Abused, confused, always love the one that   
hurt ya hurt ya hurt ya--"_  
  
Xander sings along with the radio, occasionally thumping the steering wheel for emphasis, occasionally hitting the right note. But only occasionally.  
  
 _You’re still young, yet, childe,_  Angelus thinks wistfully, creamy sweetness melting on his tongue. You’re  _young, and the night is young . . . and there’s a whole world out there . . . waiting for us to devour it._  
  
He smiles at the rearview mirror--at their lack of reflection--then closes his eyes, content to let the world zip by.  
  
Content to let his boy get them where they’re going in one piece.   
  
 _". . . it's a crack, baby I'm ready to go  
Baby I'm ready to go. . . ."_


	4. Unlife: Interrupted . . . a Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What--still here? Wow, okay, um . . . this is the prologue to 'Unlife Interrupted', written for ladycat777 as part of the lynnevitational. Spander? Smut? HC? Check, check and double check!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I swear, your honor, these characters just fell off a truck--honest!  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Hmm. Post NFA by some years, part of the Unlife!verse. Major character deaths, torture, non-con (hi mom!)

_In that moment, he understands everything: what he is, who he is--who he_ was _\--and what he's done.  
  
For in that moment, it all sweeps over him and through him, a tsunami as molten and heavy as a thousand suns, bringing with it memory, and memory of life. The faces--and the names that go with the faces, for a few. Those few are smiling, some even loving. But most are not. Most are deathmasks, each a unique rictus of pain, horror and betrayal . . . starting with _hers. _  
  
This tsunami of discovery, of_ realization _burns him to a cinder and leaves him writhing on the warm, shifting sands of Copacabana--a broken madman driven completely sane by his own conscience.  
  
"No," he croaks, blinking away tears as thick as the rivers innocent blood he's spilled. "I--I_killed _her--"  
  
"Xander, what--?" _it _asks, dropping gracefully--a slow-motion fold to its knees. This . . . monster of matte darks and bright pales is so beautiful, so terrible that looking directly at it_ hurts _.  
  
So he closes his eye in a feeble attempt to deny this vision, shut it out. But it refuses to be dismissed, bathing him in cool, gentle touches that cut like razorblades.  
  
"Don't--don't!" He screams, trying to fend off this lethal concern while curling himself into a very nonprotective protective ball. "Don't touch me!"  
  
"Xander, listen to me--" He's being pulled up and into a cool, familiar embrace. The voice, too, is cool and familiar, but for the panic lapping away at its edges.   
  
Yes, he knows this voice, knows this _touch _. This is--  
  
(_Angel _)  
  
\--him. This is _Sire _. The one who can make everything better because once upon a time, he made everything so very much worse.  
  
Love and hatred well within in him, catch him up in arms that squeeze and suffocate him, but do nothing to drown out _their _screams or his own.  
  
_ (there is a coldness in him, joyous and savage and watchful. It revels in the memory of harm inflicted, and life taken. Its glee resounds, like bright, golden bells)  
  
(there is a din in him, also, the same hot, riotous tsunami that rolls through him again and again and again, leaving behind the tastes of ash and bile, and the echoing wail of a thousand righteous, wronged souls) _  
  
"Help me, Angel--_ help me _!" He is lost, damned . . . left beached and weeping on the cold, grey banks of sanity, with the knowledge that  
  
(_this is what I've done. This is what I've made _)  
  
not even the tenacity of a demon can save him.  
  
"I'm--I'm here, Xander. I've got you." Angel's arms are unbearable, unbreakable comfort, his words cold, barely audible puffs of air against his temples, interspersed with frantic kisses that tingle and sting like electricity.  
  
"She went crunch, she went crunch, she went crunch," he mutters, rocking--or trying to. Angel--no, _Angelus _\--is holding him so tight his ribs are starting to crack. "When I was done with her, her body went c-crunch in my arms, 'cause I was squeezing her so hard and it's my fault, it is, I killed Dawnie--"  
  
There's no redemption to be found there, but he buries his face in the soft cotton of his Sire's shirt. Bitter-sweet scents--blood, lilies and incense--cling even to his clothes. It forces more memories, more tears, more moans.   
  
More regret.  
  
"Please, make it stop. . . ."  
  
But Angel--_Angelus _\--has jumped to his feet as if the weight of a flailing, struggling man is nothing, and is stalking up the beach.  
  
"_Where are you?! _He's roaring so loud it hurts to hear it, but then . . . everything hurts, now. "_ Why don't you come out in the open and try your little magic tricks?" _  
  
(_ he can see her face, bloody, grey-pale and so very, very dead. But she's smiling at him. Not the pleased, justified smile of the avenged, but the same sweet smile that used to make him want to keep her safe forever and ever _)  
  
"Please, Sire. . . ?"  
  
Angelus is laughing, but it sounds like the snarls of an enraged predator.  
  
"You hear me, witch? When I find you, you're dead! You're dead! You're dea--"  
  
Sudden lassitude steals over him, stopping his flailing, stopping the wailing, stopping everything. For a long beat, there's nothing but perfect stillness that's  
  
(_broken _)  
  
abruptly ended when they crash to the ground in a jumble of leaden limbs and pain. Around them, the lights of the Copacabana Palace swim and shatter, only to reform in an insane blur. He turns away from it, onto his side.  
  
Facing him, the dark-bright monster, Sire, is moaning and shuddering, eyes screwed shut and fangs bared to the moonlight in a silent scream. Everything goes dim--dimmer, and he's floating, a balloon suddenly untethered and floating free.  
  
In that moment--the last moment--Angelus's--no, _Angel's _eyes open, glowing a baleful, shocked orange. They lock onto him, try to anchor him, but it's too late, too late, he's going._  
  
Going.  
  
"Xander--?"  
  
Gone.


	5. Unlife: Interrupted . . . Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut and HC, written for ladycat777 as part of the lynnevitational.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I swear, your honor, these characters just fell off a truck--honest!  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Post NFA by some years, part of the Unlife!verse. Major character deaths, torture, non-con.

"Wow, is it just me, or are they making vamps uglier and uglier?" Xander muses from the mouth of the alley.  
  
Startled, the bulldog-faced vamp glares over her shoulder, yellow eyes flashing in the near lightless murk of the alley. "I'm doin' business, here, man. Whaddaya want?"   
  
Just beyond her, pressed against the wall, a pudgy teenager with round, tear-shiny blue eyes whimpers.  
  
 _Pathetic . . . yet snackable_ , the demon notes hopefully, licking it's metaphoric lips. Xander has to force back gameface—no sense in scaring the kid into shitting his pants—and as for his demon. . . .  
  
 _Pathetic? That's a big affirmative. Snackable? You wish, asshole. Now, shut up._  The demon doesn’t subside--not as such; it merely lurks silently, watchfully in the back of Xander’s mind, oddly content with riding shot-gun, but for the occasional mutiny and disturbingly enticing suggestion.  
  
Xander sighs, rubbing his patch. It's one of many nervous habits he's acquired over recent years.   
  
"Look, it's not what  _I_  want, it's what your date, there, wants. And it seems to me like he wants to be the hell away from you."  
  
Butt-ugly sneers, revealing crooked, jagged fangs. "Oh, is  _that_  how it seems?"  
  
Xander sniffs--catches a whiff of the fear rolling off this kid like stink off a landfill. ”Yeah. And I'm sure you hear this a lot, but--he’s just not that into you.”  
  
The vamp snarls, her face getting that much more scarifying. Xander’s glad he hadn’t seen her human face and that he no longer has a gag reflex. Being this directly challenged makes the demon scramble to the front of his mind, his  _self_  for control, but this is a battle Xander’s been winning on a nightly basis for more than three years, now. His face barely ripples.  
  
The kid’s eyes are darting back and forth between the two of them frantically, hopeless and beyond scared. Tears, sweat and blood roll down his face. "Please--I just wanna go  _home_ \--I promise I won't tell anyone--"  
  
One distracted backhand from the fledge and the kid's sliding down the wall, bloody and unconscious. His attacker, meanwhile, stalks toward the mouth of the alley, wearing bravado and cheap leather like--well, a cheap suit.  
  
"You wanna throw down for this little punk, hunh?” Even smiling, she looks like some kind of fucked up gargoyle. . . . “Then bring it, Cyclops!"  
  
The vamp leaps forward, her right arm whipping out lightning-fast. There's a wicked gleam of sharp, cold steel in her fist.  
  
She's fast, but unluckily for her, not fast enough. Xander could've eaten two cheese-lovers and drunk a six-pack of Pepsi in the time it takes for her to slash out for his jugular. But, snackless, he settles for ducking, and jabbing his wrist-mounted stake up through her ribcage.  
  
Her flesh parts like cotton candy under a laser and before the knowledge of it registers in her eyes, she's drifting to the ground like a tidy shower of grey-brown confetti.  
  
The straight razor clatters to the ground next to her.  
  
"Jesus, what is this,  _West Side Story_? Who the hell even carries straight razors, anymore? Homicidal barbers? Christ!" Xander mutters, stepping over the too-small pile of dust. It feels like at least half of her is rattling around his sinuses. "' _Bring it on, Cyclops_ ' . . . yeah, well, consider it  _broughten_ , creep."  
  
The unconscious teenager is still unconscious, sitting slumped over, his breath whistling wetly in and out of his broken nose. There's blood dripping from a wound on his scalp and shallow scraps on his face, but his heartbeat is as steady and slow as his breathing.   
  
He looks like a--slightly—larger, rounder version of Andrew, and he's redolent of cheese curls, licorice whips, hormones and Oxy-Ten. And blood.  
  
Of course.  
  
Xander doesn't realize just how long he's been contemplating licking at the kid's sluggishly oozing wounds till raucous drunken laughter from three blocks over snaps him out it.  
  
He sighs and picks the kid up. "C'mon, Dungeon Master, let's get you to the e.r."  
  
The kid doesn’t even twitch.   
  
Xander walks out of the alley, into the uncertain flicker of dying street lights. Five storeys above him, his observer watches silently, until Xander and his charge are out of sight.  
  


*

  
  
On the way to his tiny apartment, Xander stops at the 24-hour bodega on the corner of his street and gets a box of Twinkies.  
  
Remembering the bright blood running down the kid’s face, he quickly grabs a second box. He’s halfway to the counter when he gives in and creeps back for a third.  
  
Some triscuits for dipping in the pint of congealed, day old pigs blood in his fridge, a bottle of Pepsi, a jar of chunky peanut butter and some Wonder Bread, and Xander’s out the door with a hearty: “ _No trabajar demasiado difícilmente, Enrique!_ ” to the guy behind the counter, whose name probably isn’t Enrique.  
  
The guy calls something back that sounds a lot more like Arabic than it does any Spanish Xander’s ever heard. It also sounds more like,  _whatever, fuck you, man,_  than it does  _thank you, and come again!_  
  
“God, I love this city,” he mutters grimly. A minute late, he’s letting himself into his building. five seconds and five flights of stairs later, he’s standing on his landing, agape.  
  
Sitting on his welcome mat, in rumpled, dusty denim and snoring like a entire lumber factory, is—-  
  
“ _Spike?_ ”  
  
One second Spike’s snorting and blinking, the next he’s on his feet, glaring and holding a switchblade.  
  
Xander shakes his head and smirks a little. “And the  _West Side Story_  theme continues. Hi, Spike.” The smirk feels strange on his face--but a lot less strange than seeing Spike asleep on his doorstep.  
  
“What? What the bloody hell are you talkin’ about, Harris?” The switchblade is abruptly gone, probably disappeared up a sleeve, and faster than Xander’s eye can follow. That Spike can still manage that kind of trick mystifies and comforts him. “Have a little tumble off the wagon, did we?”  
  
The sneer, the narrowed eyes--even the fluorescent-white hair, growing out at the roots--haven't changed one bit. But for some faint stubble and a few new lines, he looks exactly the same. He even  _snarks_  the same.   
  
The smirk turns into an actual smile. “Spike, you are and always have been the very soul of tact.” Xander fumbles out his keys with a hand that shakes only a little. Getting the key in the lock and turning it without breaking either lock or door will be a feat worthy of--of someone who routinely does either of those things.  
  
Of Xander, for instance, when he hasn’t just found Spike sleeping outside his front door.  
  
“So--“  _what the fuck're you doing here?_  Xander means to ask, but decides at the last moment that that’s being unnecessarily rude. Then he remembers who he’s talking to. “Spike, what the fuck  _are_  you doing here?”  
  
Spike frowns and shifts, shoves his hands in his jacket pockets and studies his battered boots. He looks subtly wrong without the duster, but it’s long gone--trod down in the mud of an alley and eventually washed away with blood and whatever demon remains the cleaning crews missed. “Was in the neighborhood . . . figured I’d drop by. . . ." He shrugs and finally looks Xander square in the eyes. "See how you’re doin’.”  
  
“'In the neighborhood'? 'See how I'm doing'?” Xander rolls his eye and shoulders past Spike to get to his door. These Twinkies won’t eat themselves. Not like that  _one_  box . . . he shudders. “Uh-huh. Could you try repeating that? In non-bullshit, please?”  
  
The lack of expected and snarky reply makes Xander pause with his key in the lock and unturned. He has that strange, tingly sensation on the back of his neck--Spider-sense, and he’ll always call it that, despite Chaz’s huffing--he gets when he’s about to be jumped by something that’s determined to make a meal/example/sacrifice of him.  
  
He turns around, just in time to get pinned to the door hard. Spike’s eyes are very, very blue and very, very close, boring into Xander as if waiting for something.  
  
( _they’ve been here, before, in this exact same position; it’s been nearly three years, but that doesn’t matter, not when memories this strong have the power to melt time like butter)_  
  
A little exertion—very little, in fact--and Xander could be free, could kick Spike out on his lying, temporizing ass . . . send him running back to the New Council and whoever the hell he’s freelancing for these days.  
  
A little exertion, and he could be left  _alone_  again, to pay his penance in peace, in blessed silence, without any reminders of what he’s lost . . . of what he’s thrown away.  
  
Xander’s head thuds back against the door and he closes his eye, not-so-suddenly very, very tired.  
  
"Look, Spike, just tell me why you're here, then--" is all Xander manages to say before Spike is kissing him, like kissing Xander is an Olympic sport he’s been training for all his life and he’s going for the gold, never mind that Sweden takes it every year--   
  
The mental babble ceases and the plastic bag of groceries falls to the welcome mat, forgotten.  
  



	6. Unlife: Interrupted . . . Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut and HC, written for ladycat777 as part of the lynnevitational.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: All mine, so back off.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Post NFA by some years, part of the Unlife!verse. Major character deaths, torture, non-con.

After a brief time--two, three minutes, tops--Xander shoves Spike away.  
  
Too hard, apparently, but Xander catches him before he goes tail-over-tea-kettle off the landing, shoving him against the wall, this time. "Okay, did we not have a talk about this?"  
  
Not at all ruffled, Spike leers. "Might've. Doesn't matter, though, since you obviously can't keep your hands off me."  
  
Pointedly turning his back on Spike, Xander picks up his groceries and his keys. "Obviously I can't. Every time you're near me I just wanna--push you down five flights of stairs. So, I'm afraid I can't invite you in. It's for your own safety, of course," he adds.  
  
"Not a vampire--don't need an invitation, do I?"  
  
"Not human." Xander unlocks his door, but doesn't open it. "I can literally break trespassers into fifty-seven pieces."   
  
That shuts Spike up. Not for long, but Xander's learned to take his victories where he can find them.  
  
"Harris?"  
  
He glances back at Spike--always a mistake. Because there's pouting. It's ridiculous, really, especially combined with that big-eyed anime face he's pulling . . . the one that'd be more at home on Sailor Moon.  
  
The one that makes the soul go all stupid.   
  
Xander rolls his eye. "God, you're such fraud. If I let you in, you're keeping your hands--and your lips--to yourself, capische?"  
  
That annoyingly effective pout is replaced by a smirk. He puts hand on Xander's arm and slides it up to his shoulder . . . neck . . . face. The amount of heat even just a human hand puts out seems decadent. "Is that what you really want?"  
  
Xander can't remember what it feels like to make his own body-heat, and curses himself for not paying better attention when he had it.   
  
And when he realizes Spike's somehow gotten kissing-close again, he curses himself for that, too.   
  
He catches Spike's hand and turns to face him. "Spike--" there's a million things Xander could say and should say. Even more things he shouldn't. "Just back off."  
  
"Listen, mate, we both want--wanker!" Spike yanks his hand out of Xander's managing to glare and look wounded at the same time. "You nearly broke my fingers!"  
  
"Only after I warned you to back off."  _Spoil-sport_ , the demon whispers, prowling close in his mind, waiting for a chance to break free, if only for a moment. "And I'm not your mate . . . mate."   
  
"Yeah? Got me a mark might prove otherwise." Spike tilts his head back and to the side. His neck is smooth and unmarred, unless your eyes are vampire-keen. High up, an inch or two below his jaw, are two long-healed punctures, slightly pinker than the rest of Spike's skin, as if the blood's just waiting for to wet Xander's fangs and tongue. . . .  
  
 _Mine! Mine! Mine!_  the demon pounces like an overgrown, mentally unstable kitten, throwing its will against the soul.  _What are we waiting for?! C'mon! Take him!_  
  
"No," Xander tells it, and Spike. The demon just keeps trying to break free and Spike--  
  
Spike runs his finger over the nearly invisible scar, and shivers, his eyes never leaving Xander.  
  
"Blood doesn't lie, pet," Spike says quietly.  
  
"It's not--we didn't--"   
  
 _Claim him now! Now!_  
  
 _Shut. Up!_    
  
But the demon's not going to stop fighting him on this issue. It probably won't stop till either he or Spike is dust.   
  
Xander rubs his patch. Even dead he still gets phantom pains when he's stressed, like someone's just poked him in his missing eye. "You never drank  _any_  of my blood."  
  
"And who's fault is that?" That grin aims for wicked, but falls far short, landing somewhere between brave and pathetic. It's like a flashback to the last year before Sunnydale went blooey, with him cast in the role of Buffy Summers and Spike cast as love's bitch.  
  
Just another mess Xander's caused that he can't ever fix.   
  
"Spike--what happened was a long time ago, and we were both too fucked up to know better. We did something we--" Xander forges ahead, despite the wounded-and-getting-worse expression on Spike's face. "We did something we shouldn't have—-made a mistake. It's time to move on."  
  
That not-wicked grin turns rueful. "Say that every time, don't you? Yet every time I come knockin' on your door, you let me back in."  
  
If Xander was still capable of blushing. . . . "You actually have a life to live, Spike. Go live it and let the past be."  
  
"Could say the same to you." Though it obviously takes some effort, Spike smooths his face into a pleasant, ice-cream-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth expression. "And have, as a matter of fact--though you may have been distracted, seein' as I was fucking you, at the time."  
  
If there's a come back to that, Xander doesn't know what it is. Even if he did, Spike's rebuttal would likely make any victory a pyrrhic one.  
  
It's an impasse--a standoff of Mexican proportions. Situations like this call for an unsubtle segue. Fortunately, those happen to be one of the few things Xander's still pretty good at. "Hey, here's a wacky question: are you actually here for some other reason than making us both miserable?"  
  
"If I say yes, will you let me in?"  
  
"Damnit,  _Spike_ \--"  
  
"Fine, fine." Spike puts his hands in his jacket pockets hunches his shoulders. It makes him look older, smaller. "Might be there's another Apocalypse about to come crashing down on all us poor helpless humans. Great big evil, out to create Hell on Earth, yadda-yadda-yadda . . . time  _was_  when your great big evil had imagination--a certain flair. But now, it's just  _smash-kill-destroy!_ " Spike snorts derisively. "Bloody amateurs."  
  
"And that has what to do with me?"  
  
"Let me in, and I'll tell you." Spike's tongue curls over his teeth in that smug way that makes Xander groan. Spike seems to find that very funny. "C'mon, Harris, you know you're curious."  
  
"Not really," Xander lies and throws opens his front door, flicking the light switch as an afterthought for Spike's lack of night vision. "But I don't want my neighbors complaining to the landlady about some creepy homeless guy sleeping in the hallway. So come in, and keep your hands to yourself. Are we clear?"   
  
"As Waterford." He breezes past Xander and into the apartment, looking around like he's casing the joint. "No touchy-feely. Least till you've extracted that giant Sequoia from your--God! Where d'you get your decorating tips?  _Modern Shut-In Monthly_?"  
  
Xander closes his eye, takes a few deep breaths and counts to ten before following Spike inside.  
  
It doesn't help at all.


	7. Unlife: Interrupted . . . Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut and HC, written for ladycat777 as part of the lynnevitational.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Post NFA by some years, part of the Unlife!verse. Major character deaths, torture, non-con.

"So. . . ."  
  
Xander looks up from making the first of many peanut butter and Twinkie sandwiches. Spike's leaning on the wall near the door--an obvious rent-boy pose, if Xander's ever seen one, and he has--all form-hugging blue jeans and challenging leer. It's like being back in Cleveland all over again. "If there's an apocalypse coming down the 'pike, shouldn't you be in Jolly Ol', or the Mistake-By-The-Lake? Swinging a sword, or selling wolf tickets behind some Professor Snape wannabe?"  
  
Spike's lips twitch, but he doesn't laugh. "Nah. Passed along what needed passin', me. The Watchers and Slayers can take care of it from there. The Apocalypse ain't my problem anymore."  
  
"Spoken like a true champion."  
  
"Cheers, love." Spike grins and toasts Xander with an imaginary beer. "'Sides, if the world's gonna end, there's no better place for me than by your side."  
  
Xander's soul? Is currently melting into a girlish puddle of soul-goo, while the demon is noisily wretching.  
  
 _You are so_  gay! It despairs, retreating as far from the soul as it can get.  
  
Spike's watching him, waiting for a reaction of some kind. Xander shakes his head. "Corny. And very over-the-top, Big Bad."  
  
 _Now_  Spike laughs and relaxes the stony-eyed trade pose a bit. If anything, Spike-at-ease is somehow more tempting than Spike-on-the-prowl. "Yeah. Could barely keep a straight face as I was sayin' it . . . doesn't make the sentiment any less true, however."  
  
There's nothing to say to  _that_ , so Xander clears his throat and continues peanut-buttering his bread. "So, what does the latest Apocalypse have to do with me?"  
  
"Not a damn thing." At Xander's glare, Spike shrugs, not in the least ashamed or apologetic. "Don't give me that look. I said that if you let me in I'd tell you what the Apocalypse has to do with you. And I have: nothing. Though . . . there  _have_  been a few new--and unrelated--prophecies regarding the vampire with a soul."  
  
The demon perks up, with a hopeful,  _Sire?_  Xander completely ignores it, of course. The fact is, there  _is_  no more Sire, and there never was, not really. And as for the vampire-with-a-soul. . . .  
  
That would be Xander.  
  
He shudders. "Not the Pereira Codex--or the Van Nuys scrolls? You know those were both hoaxes, right?"  
  
Spike crosses his arms, the poster-child for narrow-eyed offense. " _Yeah_ \--but how'd  _you_  know?"  
  
Xander smiles enigmatically. "A little birdy told me."  
  
"I see. And this . . . little birdy of yours has it on good authority?"  
  
"The best."  
  
"Well. Bully for you, then." Spike looks like he's just been asked to swallow something unpalatable. "Anyways, the prophecies I'm talkin' about are new--ink's not even dry on 'em, so to speak. Expect a nattied-up young Watcher to turn up on your doorstep sometime in the very near future."  
  
"Oh, goody." This next slice of bread  _seems_  kinda sturdy, but Xander's been burned by  _Wonder_  so many times. "I take it these prophecies aren't important, then? At least not important enough for Giles to show up on my doorstep?"  
  
Spike looks away. "Rupes a busy man, pet--gotta hold down the fort, and all that. Can't be haring off to all points of the globe, even when he wants to--"  
  
"Which he doesn't, when it comes to me." When Spike attempts to back-pedal, Xander waves him silent. Since he was turned, Xander's relationship with Giles has been, well, nonexistent. "He doesn't, Spike. Can you blame him? If I had a choice, I suppose I wouldn't associate with me, either. Sandwich?"  
  
"What? Oh, ta, but no. Not even if it was that last sandwich on Earth." Spike makes an ostentaciously disgusted face and the soul is getting morosely nostalgic for better, cleaner days. "You still have the culinary ambitions of a psychotic five year old. I guess some things'll never change."   
  
That low, fond tone is the one Xander remembers hearing most when Spike was between Council assignments. They'd stock up on food and blood and stay in the apartment, killing time in the best possible way till Spike's cellphone rang.   
  
 _You can't go home again,_  the demon grumbles.  _Or, in your case,_ won't _. Have I told you lately how much you_ suck?  
  
Xander sighs and drops his eyes to his half-made second sandwich. The bread's torn again, this time beyond use.   
  
The true wonder of  _Wonder_  Bread? Is that despite the fact that it consistently proves to be inadequate for Xander's sandwiching needs, he still buys it.  
  
 _\--really, really suck--_  
  
The silence--at least the one outside his head--draws out. Xander finishes making his second sandwich and a third with minimal tearage, then looks up at Spike. The relaxed lean has degenerated into a mostly un-sexy slouch, and the come-hither stare is gone. Without those things to distract him, Xander's free to notice some details he hadn't previously picked up on.  
  
Like how palid Spike is, even for Spike--that there are faint purplish circles under his eyes, and the hollows of his cheeks are a bit _too_  hollow.  
  
Those new lines in his face aren't just from sun, or smiling, but from worry and strain.   
  
Despite the shanshu, Xander has never been able to think of Spike as human. Spike is too-- _big_ , too larger-than-life to be  _merely_ human. There's too much of him.  
  
But merely human is exactly what he is, and moments like this remind Xander--painfully--that humanity is almost always a terminal condition.  
  
 _Doesn't have to be--_  
  
Xander's soul saves him the trouble--delivers a savage,  _shut up, asshole!_  that momentarily does the trick.  
  
In light of the three-ring circus going on in his head, Xander hardly feels qualified to ask this, but he can't  _not_. Not when it's  _Spike_ : "Are you . . . are you okay?"  
  
"Who? Me?" Spike's laugh is way too hearty to be real and Xander knows he's about to be lied to. Admitting to something as _human_  as feeling run-down and under the weather has always been particularly hard for Spike. "Bloody fantastic--never been better."   
  
Yep, as straightforward answers go, that one definitely isn't. But other than looking tired, Spike  _seems_  to be fine. His scent--citrus-y and bright, the way sunlight would smell--has taken on a strange, bitter tang to it . . . like burnt herbs.  
  
Whatever he's been doing since Xander last saw him, he was doing it hip-deep in magic. "You're not letting the Council run you into the ground, are you?"  
  
Spike's rolls his eyes. "Not lettin' 'em run me, period. How've  _you_  been holdin' up, pet?  
  
"Great!" It's his automatic answer, complete with an automatic grin to prove just how great he is.  
  
Spike drifts almost diffidently toward the kitchenette and Xander, touching a few random bits of secondhand furniture. "No, how've you been  _really_?"   
  
Now it's Xander's turn to make a big, fake party-laugh. "What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? I said I'm fine."   
  
"No, you said you were 'great'. You then downgraded that 'great' to 'fine'." Spike leans on the counter, his blue, blue eyes daring Xander to lie some more. "If I ask you a third time, what answer will I get?"  
  
"The one where I tell you how much I appreciate you stopping by, thank you for your concern then send you packing." It's an unsubtle warning to  _drop it_ , but Spike's not  _going_  drop it. He's never been one to just leave well enough alone  
  
"How  _are_  you, Xander?"  
  
There's always been something disarmingly intimate about  _Spike_  calling him by his first name--more so because even when they were sleeping together, he so rarely did. "I really am okay. More or less."  
  
"Emphasis on the more, or the less?"   
  
Xander lets the grin falter until it's a half-smile. Now that the only thing separating them is the messy counter and its payload of Twinkie-peanut buttery goodness, lying doesn't come quite so easily. "Hey--I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for 'great' and 'fine' to happen. Those aren't things I have a right to be. Not anymore." Now that his sandwiches are finished, he doesn't have the stomach for them, or the blood that's chilling in his fridge. That's been happening a lot, lately. "Sure you don't want a sandwich? They're delic--well, they stick to your ribs."  
  
Spike shakes his head when Xander proffers the plate. "I ate earlier--and I'd like to keep what I ate down, thanks."  
  
"Haha." The ensuing silence isn't uncomfortable so much as painfully expectant. "Look--if you wanna hang out here for awhile, till it's light out, you're welcome to." And there's that smug tongue-curl of victory again. "But-- _but_ , when the sun's up, you have to go back to--wherever it is you're living, now."  
  
"Nope, don't think I will," Spike says, just as nice as you please.   
  
"I wasn't asking a question and this is  _not_  open to negotiation. You can't be here." All of which Xander's said before, all of which Spike will manage to talk his way around if Xander doesn't stop him. "Do you know how awful it is to have you this close and not-- _have_  you?"  
  
Spike's face and tone are irony-free. "Yeah. I've got a pretty good idea how it feels to be love's bitch, now that you mention it."   
  
"And do you think I  _want_  to live like this? That I enjoy being cold and lonely and miserable? Well, I don't. But that's the way it has to be." Xander steps around the counter and past Spike. He doesn't stop till he gets to the window. The black-out drapes are the most expensive thing in the apartment--that includes the refrigerator--and they're always kept closed. But Xander can sense sunrise coming. Less than an hour off.   
  
It'd be so easy to just reach out, open the curtains and let time make everything better--  
  
The soul and the demon clamor and tug at him from both sides, throwing dozens of arguments and threats his way. This is one of two things they can both agree on without qualification.  
  
"No, it's not," Spike says softly--the way he  _always_  says it. "As flattering as it would be to think that I'm capable of making you perfectly happy--in the fighting-screaming-pissing match that passes for our so-called relationship, have you  _ever_  come close to a moment of perfect happiness?"  
  
 _Yes._  "Why do you keep  _doing_  this to me? To the both of us?" Xander doesn't even realize how tightly his fists are clenched until blood starts dripping on the floor with a muted  _pat-pat-pat_. Still, he can't unclench them. "Every time you come back it rips me apart."  
  
"And every time I  _leave_  it rips me apart. You think that's just a coincidence?"  
  
Xander focuses on the patter of blood, on the lightless swath of drapery in front of him. Anything to help him shut out Spike and his stupid steady heartbeat, his stupid sunshiney scent and his stupid, soothing, very-much missed voice.  
  
"Listen, mate--pet-- _Xander_." That disarming intimacy again, and from right behind him. Spike moves way too quietly for a human, and that--hell, everything  _about_  Spike throws Xander for a loop; always will. "If I kiss you again . . .  _just_  kiss you, am I gonna get tossed down five flight of stairs?"  
  
Even though Spike's question is just a formality, and they both know it, it's still such a very  _Spike_  way to ask  _do you still want me?_ "You know you won't, damnit."  
  
"Won't say I was  _totally_  sure about you. You're a prickly bastard most days." Spike's arms are sliding around his waist as if no time has passed, and Xander's reactions--body, heart, demon and soul--have been caught in a similar time-warp. When Spike's sigh puffs warm and gentle against his neck, every muscle in his body relaxes. "The prickly's not the word I'd use to describe you right this moment, pet . . . God, I've missed this."  
  
This is the other thing the demon and soul agree on--the  _only_  other thing. The pleasant shiver that catches him up and refuses to put him down means one thing:  _this is right._    
  
Never mind that by midmorning, after Spike's fallen asleep next to him-- _Just a kiss, my ass,_  Xander will think--Xander's going to be tied into more knots than jumbo pretzel. Never mind that the soul's already fretting about moments of perfect happiness (and the demon, conversely, is doing backflips).  
  
Never mind that, to paraphrase a manic-depressive robot, this will all end in tears, just like last time. Turning to meet the hungry, possessive, citrus-and-sunshine kiss that's waiting for him is  _right_.  
  
Irrationally, it's the only thing in Xander's unlife that ever has been.


End file.
